this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
1293 points (83.1% liked)
Memes
45660 readers
987 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In a communist society i would most likely have to live in a building like that, in capitalism i can use my skills and effort to earn money for a nice home. Only the lazy, unskilled people want communism.
Yes, because the mentally ill and the old and the unlucky deserve the tents.
Yes in Communism you would have to live in a building instead of being a bumbling idiot looking for your bootstraps to pull up in a tent underneath an overpass, while Capitalism builds luxury high rises your dumbass will never set foot in. People arent homeless because they are unskilled or lazy, they are homeless due to Material Conditions outside of their control.
Most of them fucked up their life with drugs, it's their own fault
Nice try, but that's a material condition resulting from living under late stage capitalism.
Surface level understanding of theory is surface level.
i hit you with real world examples and you give me buzzwords
"A 2021 study from the University of Chicago estimates that 53% of people living in homeless shelters and 40% of unsheltered people were employed." Most homeless folks have jobs and lose them due to worsening Material Conditions. Facts dont care about yohr feelings. source
so more than half of them are unemployed, and others are prioritising other things to spend their money on. You cant tell me 7.25 bucks per hour isn't enough for a home and food.
Are you being a contrarian to help me prove my point? if so thanks. Full-time minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in the US, according to a new report
Why do you think people go to drugs, most of the time it's because their life was already bad and the drugs just made it worse. Yes, there is a percentage of people that are lazy but it is only a small margin of homeless people. There is enough well researched material on youtube about these topics on youtube. If the system doesn't help homeless people at all it will not get better even for the people that aren't lazy and their life just didn't go the right way or they were exploited at their workplace to a point that they couldn't afford living anymore.
Just because the concept of capitalism says it is possible to "work" your way to the top doesnt mean it is happening, almost every single rich person got their wealth by some means of exploitation of other people
A third of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. On average people spend a third of their paycheck on housing. That's not a lot of room for any kind of bad situations before they become homeless. It can be something completely out of their control like a car running a light and killing their mother which sends then into depression.
Citation needed
"Most research shows that around 1/3 of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and around 2/3 of these people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders"
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
So most homeless habe jobs and most homeless dont have substance abuse issues. Lmao you must be a few crayons short of a full box.
You provided a source that says most of the homeless people are unemployed (53% of sheltered and 40% of sheltered have jobs). I provided a source that says 2/3 of homeless people have a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Do you not know what the words "most" and "majority" mean?
As someone who just read over these comments: Your reading comprehension sucks.
Your own source says 1/3 of homeless have problems with alcohol/drugs. So 2/3 don't.
Of those 1/3 with problems 2/3 have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders.
so they must likely fucked up with drug use, and are nearing the end of rehab now
You still don't get it? Your argument was most of them are druggies. But your own source says 2/3 of them have no drug problem at all.
No, my argument was that drug use lead them to being homeless. A lot of homeless people are in rehab programs, and it helps them a lot. The source i listed is one of those programs. You seem like the one with reading comprehension issuses.
Translations:
"If someone uses drugs, they deserve to be homeless."
"It's impossible that people would pick up a drug habit to cope with their homelessness problem."
"Anyone else who becomes homeless is just dumb or lazy. It's their fault they don't have my privilege and I'll ignore any amount of evidence to not rethink my shitty, self-entitled world view."
YOUR source said only 1/3 have a current substance abuse issue. And my source said that 53% of homeless folks in shelters have jobs while 40% of unsheltered folks have jobs. Most homeless folks start out using shelters and then transition to living on the street as they loss hope and ergo lose employment as their Material Conditions worsen. I am done arguing with your surface level understanding of a complex crisis. I pray you and yours never experience the crushing hopelessness that is living on the street and not knowing where you will rest your head.
we wont because we know how to work for our bread
How many people become homeless while having full-time work? I'm sure they just didn't work hard enough to deserve a place to live.
Did you zone out during the part where it was explained over half of homeless people work?
Whatever you say little buddy.
No one chooses to be a drug addict or an alcoholic, you cretin.
So you proved yourself wrong. Congrats.
how? 2/3 of people fucking up their life with drugs is a majority
The statistic says 1/3 of homeless population has issues with drugs/alcohol, and 2/3 of that 1/3 (or 2/9) have lifetime histories of abuse...
oh fuck...
In my defense, English is not my first language
Your task is not to prove that drugs exist in the homeless community. For your point of them "fucking their lives up with drugs" to be true, you have to prove that their personal drug use was the catalyst for their living conditions. Do that or take the L.
And to check yourself, you might want to look up the prevalence of drug use in more affluent communities. Hint: it's a lot.
So even if you're right, you'd condemn the other 1/3rd to homelessness to spite the others? People that made bad decisions are still people. I hope you've never made any bad decisions...
Also, you're condemning entire communities. People in desperate situations often have to turn to crime. Paying for their incarceration (or healthcare for that matter) COSTS MORE THAN JUST PROVIDING FOR THEIR BASIC NEEDS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Your stance is stupid, cruel, and shortsighted.
Two major schools of thought:
We should help everyone, even if it means "bad people" can take some from the system.
We should not help anyone but a tiny fraction of people so that no "bad people" can benefit from the system.
Personally, I don't really favor making the world that much worse to avoid some spoilage. We can do better than hurting a lot of people so we get the "bad" ones, who in my view are responding to material conditions, neurology, and history.
I don't know that any particular person said it, but I agree with the notion that the first sign of civilization was a human corpse, with a femur that had been broken, and then healed. A human with a broken leg is pretty screwed on their own. Someone had to help that person get food and water long enough for it to heal. Civilization is when we help each other fulfill our needs, and that's beautiful.
Try to indulge me, as I try to humanize the people you are talking about in a way that might resonate with you.
Imagine you work 40hrs a week, getting paid minimum wage or next to minimum wage, the housing market continues to worsen around you as rent continues to increase but wages don't. If you have a place already and are just barely scraping by living paycheck to paycheck, which a lot of people are these days. One small bad financial day from an emergency or unexpected cost and you're screwed. You miss your rent payment and you get evicted. Now, if you don't have a safety net of people, which we can't guarantee everyone does have living family or friends that will take you in for a month while you get back on your feet, you become homeless. You get fired from work because you've taken too many unpaid days off to try and get your life sorted so you don't have to sleep on the streets. Now you can't get another job because most places won't hire you without an address, and collecting unemployment becomes difficult because if you have no address and no direct deposit you can't get it mailed to you to claim.
As for the drugs that you say they have chosen to ruin their lives with, a pack of cigarettes, a small bag of weed, some opiates, or alcohol costs a whole lot less than rent for a month or even a motel room for the night.
The financial and housing situation for a lot of people out there in the world is really fragile, and if you add on other issues that I didn't list such as mental health issues, lack of education or job experience with any education you have, or existing addiction, it can really add up and make it so your going from sleeping in a small bachelor's apartment one night to sleeping on a park bench the next.
I don't fully ascribe to the concept of communism myself (it's a good label for most folks but I'm too picky about nitty gritty stuff so say I like it when I would want to adjust a few things about it), but I definitely think social housing is how you fix homelessness. Cities and states / provinces waste more money dealing with homelessness the way they do now then just building them socialized housing.
Their own fault? That's the dumbest thing I've read today. Yeah because most home less people are in that situation ONLY because of their own choices, not bad circumstances, right?
Like people affected by natural disasters... 🌧 🌧 🔥 🌳🔥 who had their homes destroyed and couldn't afford to rebuild - welp- MUST BE DRUG ADDICTION
Aside, even if it is addiction, why are those people undeserving of help now? Just because there are callus jerrks who don't care about other humans generally, doesn't mean we're all like that. Grow some compassion, eh?
Listen, I'm no tankie by any means (in the libsoc camp) but that representation on who calls themselves a communist is so bias and obviously full of venom and spite.
Are there some lazy people who like communism? Yea. There are also some lazy people that heavily push capitalism. Being lazy doesn't predispose you to a certain economic belief structure.
That's reductive.